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‘Skinned’ enough at PIT

‘Skinned’ enough at PIT

As the
late legendary commentator Paul Harvey was famous for quipping: “Now, the rest of the
story.”

It was a
month ago that the Post-Gazette reported how expanded air cargo service at
Pittsburgh International Airport (PIT) might offer “a silver lining” to a
facility “battered” by the coronavirus pandemic.

“As flights have
plummeted and travelers have all but disappeared because of the COVID-19
pandemic, cargo has emerged as a bit of a bright spot at the Findlay airport,”
the P-G reports.

Continued the P-G dispatch:

“At a time when virtually every
commercial airline is slashing flights because of the lack of demand for
travel, UPS and FedEx have reached out to inquire about possibly adding
service, said Christina Cassotis, CEO of the Allegheny County Airport Authority
… .

“’We’re aware that we could be
seeing more activity from both of them,’ she said.”

That’s
because, the P-G further reports, “E-commerce has seen a huge surge in demand
as millions of people sheltering at home shop for goods and services online.”

Who
knows how long that surge might last as the country slowly reopens for
in-person business.

But
that’s not the whole story.

As
The Wall Street Journal reported last week, prior to the pandemic more than
half of all air cargo traveled on passenger flights. But far fewer passenger
flights mean less freight has been hauled that way and that has led to much
higher freight costs.

Thus,
the UPS-es and FedEx-es of the world are looking to add service to meet demand
for more reasonable freight charges.

But,
and as broached in a previous At Large, at what cost to the public treasury?

It’s
a valid question considering the Allegheny County Airport Authority subsidized Qatar
Air Cargo to the tune of a couple of million dollars in a contract that
incentivized failure – in fact, paying Qatar not to meet its
tonnage goals.

So
warped was the authority’s mindset that it offered Qatar a second deal.
Qatar stopped flying out of PIT in December; it remains unclear what amount of
the new subsidy, if any, was paid out.

And
this is what Cassotis now says was part of a grand plan “to position the
airport for increased cargo flights and logistics”?

Oh,
we’ve not even again recounted the failure after failure after failure of
bribing passenger airlines to serve PIT, only to pull out when the subsidies
ended and their publicly subsidized business model failed.

If
UPS and FedEx want to, in response to market demands – temporary as they may be
— add expanded cargo service on their own dime, that’s great. But taxpayers (or
any other public dollars) should have no skin in this game.

After
all, John and Jane Q. Taxpayer have been skinned enough.

Colin
McNickle is communications and marketing director at the Allegheny Institute
for Public Policy (cmcnickle@alleghenyinstitute.org).